HOWTO Create perfect fake identities
In his latest Wired column, Bruce Schneier runs the thought-experiment of creating perfect identities. I noodled with this when my daughter was born -- I got her birth certificate from the Hackney Council, a sheet of ordinary laser-printed A4, took it to the Canadian embassy with a couple of photos that could have been any baby, and a few weeks later, a Canadian passport arrived. I thought, hmm, what if I were do to this again next year, but this time with my own laser-printed "certificate?" I could make a new identity for Poesy to step into in 20 years when she tires of her existing database shadow.
Imagine you're in charge of infiltrating sleeper agents into the United States. The year is 1983, and the proliferation of identity databases is making it increasingly difficult to create fake credentials. Ten years ago, someone could have just shown up in the country and gotten a driver's license, Social Security card and bank account -- possibly using the identity of someone roughly the same age who died as a young child -- but it's getting harder. And you know that trend will only continue. So you decide to grow your own identities.How to Create the Perfect Fake IdentityCall it "identity farming." You invent a handful of infants. You apply for Social Security numbers for them. Eventually, you open bank accounts for them, file tax returns for them, register them to vote, and apply for credit cards in their name. And now, 25 years later, you have a handful of identities ready and waiting for some real people to step into them.
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ssshhhhh!
Most of us already use several personae online. Why shouldn't it extend into meatspace?
thanks for the hint, Cory. now please don't tell anyone else ;)
Just before I left the USA I tried to kill my data shadow with the less important organizations.....
... by returning almost all mail I received with 'deceased'.
Perhaps I should have crossed the line by providing a copy of a fake death cert. That might have slowed the credit card offers...
I mark deceased on all my credit-card solicitations and put them back inthe mail, too!
So...no reason for everyone to have to prepare so far ahead, seems to lend well to specialization. When you need a new identity, you just go visit the old identity farmer who has been patiently raising them for years.
Now, terrorists need fake identities. So if you see anyone suspicious, who has what looks like valid ID, please report them to the authorities.
Is anyone else scared to click that link? I'm gonna have night-terrors of Guantanamo just looking at that link.
I can practically hear the NSA sniffin' my bits already.
"Let me start off by saying that I'm making this whole thing up."
That was the most shocking part of the article for me... the fact that he felt the need to preface it with that. Have things really gotten THAT bad?
Marvelous!
Too bad I didn't have one started for me 60 years ago... :o(
The only problem I see with creating these identities based on non-real children is that eventually, and probably sooner than you'd think, some (highly overzealous?) local school administrator is going to inquire as to why your two or seven or eighty-one children aren't in school at all. Then the task of creating portfolios or whatever to "prove" they are being homeschooled, plus renting realchildren from friends to use for face-to-face meetings with said school administrators, etc, would become so great you'd probably want to go on a fakechild killing spree to make the pain stop. Car accident. Explosion. Vaporized. No remains left, honest.
Just saying. Personally, I would be a huge fan of a "fake" identity for everybody. When it gets stolen, just reboot into a new one. A legalized fake identity would be great for medical records, too.
The idea is extra tempting, for when I'll have a kid. @10 is right to point out the hidden obligations that an identity would entail. Wonder what they are...
What about the financial incentives? Think about all those extra dependents at tax time....
Didn't Charles Stross do something like that in his novel "Halting State" ?
Reporting yourself as deceased doesn't stop the credit card offers.
My mother-in-law passed away five years ago, and I cancelled her credit cards with the explanation that she was deceased.
Just last week, Sears sent her, care of me, a credit card solicitation that stated "The Estate of has been pre-approved...!"
Strawberryfrog, I don't think so. One of the characters in Halting State had a virtual sister and niece, a sim family that continued to "live" after the originals had been killed in a car crash.
If you want a new identity you can buy one. There are people who do that for a living. A digitial society makes inventing alternate histories rather easy.
Um, there are SOME people who created ''shadow'' identities for themselves over thirty years ago, including passports. Not terrorists, just careful people who could imagine a future need to sort of . . . disappear?
[slaps forehead, makes "D'oh" sound]
For years, I've been kicking myself for not running out and registering a round dozen saleable domain names (and investing in Microsoft and Cisco, of course). Now I realize that what I should really have been doing was 'farming' a couple of dozen identities for the last twenty years or so. The investment of time and money required is fairly minimal, and I'm sure there are people who'd be willing to pay good money for a really "clean" identity.
Incidentally, I'm not entirely convinced by Schneier's view that the payoff is too remote for terrorist organizations. Some of them do seem to be able to "take the long view" and plan on a scale of years rather than months.
the other option is to get enough people to do it no matter how badly and create so much "noise" that belated efforts will still work.
Back to Charles Stross: If a terrorist organization gets its dirtly little hands on a quantum cruncher and a few back bone access codes, they'll be able to get into almost any data base and invent entire histories for whomever they please. Or delete anyone they please. The future is about digital Security, or the lack thereof. Do you know what's really running on your cell phone right now? The info wars have already started.
@Jeff: not the virtual family. The character that I as thinking of was called "Nigel MacDonald".
Stawberryfrog, of course you're right. I thought of that as soon as I started to think about it. That book was a little difficult to follow at times.
Confession: My name isn't really w000t IRL.